Allons-y!

Last April, I decided to splurge a bit and a purchase a box of Doctor Who cards from Blowout Cards. To be fair, there was some sort of sale going on and the box was half-priced. (It's still available and on sale if you're interested.)

The box guarantees the full 88-card base set and two autographs. This is no ordinary box, however, as these are Widevision cards that measure 4 7/8 by 2 3/4 inches--they're big cards. The production was limited to just 1,500 boxes, and the box itself is pretty snazzy. 

The 88-card set depicts David Tennant's run as the 10th Doctor over three series (2005-2010).  Each episode gets two cards, with the exception of Tennat's last four episodes which were considered specials--they each received a single card. 

David Tennant is my favorite actor, and I was hoping to pull one his autographs but I wasn't that lucky. 

I still did had some decent luck, pulling what I considered the fourth best auto from a list of 38 signers (David Tennant, Billie Piper, and Alex Kingston would have been just ahead of John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness, though it's neck and neck.) The Captain Jack auto is considered a Bronze parallel (#/25). Base, Blue (#/50), Silver (#/10), and Gold (1/1) parallels are the other versions. 

I also pulled the very pixelated Oliver Moregenstern you see above. I'm not sure how apparent it is from the scan, but it's one of the most pixelated images I've seen on a card. I didn't initially recall who Oliver Morgenstern was and later looked it up to find out he played a medical student in the Series 3 premier, Smith and Jones. He later briefly appears in the Series 4 episode Turn Left, an alternate universe episode where we discover Martha Jones gave him the last oxygen to save him after the Royal Hope Hospital was transported to the moon by the Judoon. He's a minor character in both episodes, so this is certainly a "filler" autograph in the set. Still, I'm happy to have the card in my collection.

Before I reveal the set in its entirety, I thought I should also show what the backs of the cards look like. It's fairly simplistic. The name of the episode appears in the bar near the top of the card, and it's followed by a short plot summary of the episode. Becuase each episode gets two cards, the summary is split between both cards. You'll notice the summary on this cards ends with an ellipsis; the summary on the next card then begins with an ellipsis and completes the summary. The episode depicted above might be my favorite episode of the series, and it certainly contains one of my favorite lines. 

Without further ado, here's the complete base set for your viewing pleasure. Five years of fantastic television condensed into 88 slices of cardboard. 

Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey-Wimey Stuff

I found myself with time to kill while gallivanting around Manhattan a couple of weeks ago, and I happened to find my way into a card shop. Well, I suppose it's more of a comic shop, but they had some cards and I had some cash, so it seemed like a good fit. 

They had a few baseball products (Series 1 and Heritage) but mostly purveyed in non-sports cards. And while I primarily collect baseball, I didn't have much of a choice when I found loose packs of Doctor Who cards. 

I am a huge Whovian, that is, a fan of Doctor Who. Or, as my girlfriend would probably say, a huge nerd. 

For those unfamiliar, Doctor Who is a long-running show on the BBC that originally premiered in 1963. It aired until 1989 but was revived in 2006. It follows the Doctor (played at times by several different men--and one woman) and his companions as they travel across space and time. It's so incredibly cheesy and dorky, and I love it. If you have Amazon Prime Video and are itching for a new show to watch, I'd highly recommend it--just prepare for some of the worst special effects ever in the first couple of seasons. 

There have been a few different Doctor Who products over the past few years, including two signature series sets where the focus has been on the autos. The packs I found at this card shop, however, were not from the signature series sets; rather, they hail from the 2015 Topps Doctor Who set. 

The set features a variety of characters and scenes from the show, broken into sets of "Time Lords," "Companions," "Aliens," and Villians," among others. This Krafayis card happens to be an alien (and villian) from one of my favorite Doctor Who episodes: Vincent and the Doctor. I highly suggest any Van Gogh fans check this episode out. Sneak peek below.

The Doctor has had his fair share of gadgets over the years, including the adorable K9. It's a dog and a robot. Twice the pet and none of the mess. 

I didn't manage to find an auto in any of the packs I bought (I'll get my hands on a David Tennant signature one of these days), though I did get a nice hit of sorts: a blue parallel #'d to 199 of The War Doctor. 

The War Doctor was depicted by John Hurt in a few episodes in 2013. Sadly, Hurt passed away just over two years ago. 

The back of these cards are fairly basic but provide some cool information, including a quick recap of the character and an Origin Year which serves as a quick and easy guide to the character's origin. The Tardis is also a cool addition. 

While most of the cards in the set focus in on characters and moments from "New" Who (a colloquial term for the revived version of the show) there are some great cards of moments from the first iteration of the show. I've yet to go back and watch any of the original series, but the Fourth Doctor seems like a fun character.

I've considered purchasing a box of Doctor Who cards for some time now, but I haven't yet pulled the trigger. There are some great autos mixed into the product, including David Tennant, Alex Kingston, and Billie Piper, but the price point hasn't been low enough yet. I imagine I'll probably chase the base sets in the near future, however. 

The universe is big, it's vast and it's complicated. Any other Whovians out there?